Gendered Couchsurfing: women from Western Europe and East-Asia contesting de-sexualised cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Couchsurfing is a social-networking site for hospitality exchange. To promote the site, the organizer, Couchsurfing.org, creates the discourse of Couchsurfing cosmopolitanism to emphasize the value of sharing with strangers and tolerance of cultural difference in Couchsurfing practice. This study argues that the discourse production is under a patriarchal system, in which the experience about women’s fear of men’s harassment and according practice are concealed. By conceptualizing the sexed-and-gendered body in Couchsurfing, this study exposes the power, knowledge and social relation in the cross-cultural context of Couchsurfing, represented not only in women’s feeling, performance and interaction but also in their embodied cosmopolitanism. The comparison between with Western-European and East-Asian women’s experience is also included in the analysis. It highlights the effects of the gender role inscribed on women’s body which makes a difference in women’s cross-cultural interaction as well as their embodied cosmopolitanism.

Keywords:

• Couchsurfing
• hospitality exchange
• sexual harassment
• embodied cosmopolitanism
• gendered body
• woman traveler

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Robert Kloosterman for his support and advice in this research. Special thanks go to Dr. Pieter Terhorst, Professor Jeroen de Kloet, Dr. Yiu Fai Chow, Natashe Lemos Dekker and Dr. Wei-Ju Huang for their valuable suggestions in this article.